PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Sarah R. Cohodes
AU  - Daniel S. Grossman
AU  - Samuel A. Kleiner
AU  - Michael F. Lovenheim
TI  - The Effect of Child Health Insurance Access on Schooling: Evidence from Public Insurance Expansions
AID  - 10.3368/jhr.51.3.1014-6688R1
DP  - 2015 Nov 30
TA  - Journal of Human Resources
4099  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2015/11/20/jhr.51.3.1014-6688R1.short
4100  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2015/11/20/jhr.51.3.1014-6688R1.full
AB  - Although a sizable literature analyzes the effects of public health insurance programs on short-run health outcomes, little prior work has examined their long-term effects. We examine the effects of public insurance expansions among children in the 1980s and 1990s on their future educational attainment. We find that expanding health insurance coverage for low-income children increases the rate of high school and college completion. These estimates are robust to only using federal Medicaid expansions, and mostly are due to expansions that occur when the children are not newborns. Our results indicate that the long-run benefits of public health insurance are substantial.